Monday 27 December 2021

2021: West Side Story - 2021 Movie

 

 

West Side Story – the 2021 movie.
Release date: 26 December 2021 (Australia)
Directed by    Steven Spielberg
Screenplay by    Tony Kushner
Based on West Side Story by Jerome Robbins, Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim,    Arthur Laurents

Starring   

    Ansel Elgort
    Ariana DeBose
    David Alvarez
    Mike Faist
    Rita Moreno
    Rachel Zegler

Cinematography: Janusz Kamiński
Edited by Michael Kahn, Sarah Broshar

Music by Leonard Bernstein

Reviewed by Frank McKone (December 27, 2021)

Photo: westsidestory.com

Photo: Nick Tavernise

Photo:westsidestory.com

This West Side Story is the real thing.  

It is not a romance, but an insightful tragedy.

Just as Shakespeare intended in his story of Romeo and Juliet set in the newly-wealthy upper-class merchant family society in which he grew up in the 1500s; and as Stephen Sondheim intended in his Maria (Rachel Zegler) and Tony (Ansel Elgort) story of social inequality in his America of massive economic ‘development’ in the 1950s; so the story presented by Steven Spielberg is the tragedy of unintended consequences, warning us in the 2020s that human greed ultimately ends in disaster.

It is bad enough that we as a total world-wide community cannot get our act together to properly and fairly manage the current pandemic – whose existence is essentially natural.

Far worse is our belief in our need for continuously growing wealth which not only causes the divisions between the haves and the have-nots, the in-groups and the out-groups, and the impossibility of acceptance – let alone love – across social boundaries which Shakespeare, Sondheim and Spielberg have all recognised; but also that human greed has now taken us beyond dancing against each other with menacing clicking fingers – way beyond Jets and Sharks upsetting social norms – to the point where human induced heating of the earth is likely to end ignominiously in the death of humankind, represented by the killings of the men at the end of West Side Story with no sense of a future for the women.

Spielberg has been careful to set his movie realistically in the New York of the 1950s, adapting the arts of music, photography and dance, and acting – as originally written by Sondheim and directed and choreographed by Jerome Robbins – to show a picture of how and why the street gangs existed as an necessary element of that society.  Spielberg didn’t need to ‘update’, just as Shakespeare didn’t need to ‘update’ Verona.  For us, today, 1950s New York is as far distant as Verona was for Londoners in 1597.

Jerome Robbins’ work on stage transported audiences everywhere into the world of the drama, as all good theatre must.  He made the dance the conduit for our imaginations.  The 1961 movie failed because Ernest Lehman’s screenplay and the directing by Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins could not make us believe in the reality of the situation.  The dance, the photography and the acting made the story a mere romance.

Spielberg’s film is of the gritty reality.  The dancing in the streets is integrated into the social life of the have-nots in the streets where their homes are being destroyed by big business ‘re-development’ – and that transports us into that reality.

The result, in my view, is that Spielberg’s West Side Story is a substantial work of art, just as Robbins himself achieved on stage.  Though the advertising describes the 2021 movie as Musical/Romance  2h 36m, I can promise you that after those 2 hours and 36 minutes of Tony’s attempt to believe in himself, after a year’s contemplation in jail for having nearly killed a man in a ‘rumble’ as the previous leader of The Jets, and watching Maria’s realisation that she is left with no option but to do her best for herself despite everything, you will leave the theatre seeing the world around you for what it really is.

You’ll not forget Rita Moreno.  She plays the widow of Doc, still running the drugstore he used to run in the original stage show.  She is the one character who understands the reality and the need for compassion and common sense in an uncertain world.

The Jets and The Sharks
Confrontation in the Dance Hall
Photo: westsidestory.com

Rita Moreno
as Mrs Doc
Photo: westsidestory.com

PS You don't need to know anything about the original stage show or the old movie.  This West Side Story stands alone.  Don't miss it.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

Monday 13 December 2021

2021: Theatre Network Australia - A National Cultural Plan

 

 Theatre Network Australia provides information and suggestions with the next Federal Election in mind, to be held before the end of May, 2022.

Posted by Frank McKone

December 14, 2021

https://tna.org.au/our-work/advocacy/advocacy-101-national-cultural-plan/

The plan to make a plan

Australia does not have a national policy or plan for arts and culture. We have had two policies in the past, both by Labor; Creative Nation in 1994 under Paul Keating, and Creative Australia in 2013 under Julia Gillard. Both were short lived.

According to arts and culture think tank, A New Approach (ANA), having a national arts and culture plan would:

  • Use our rich culture in the recovery from COVID-19, the economic downturn, and recent natural disasters

  • Ensure Australia’s unique stories are heard nation-wide as well as internationally

  • Build confidence in our creative and cultural industries, allowing for growth and necessary change

  • Help ensure every single person in this country has the opportunity for happiness, togetherness and the connectedness offered by cultural participation and contribution

In August 2020 the Federal Government launched a Parliamentary Inquiry into Cultural and Creative Industries and Institutions. In this inquiry the Committee considered the following points in regards to creative and cultural industries, which were provided by Minister Paul Fletcher:

  1. How to recognise, measure and grow economic benefits and employment opportunities

  2. How to recognise, measure and grow non-economic benefits that enhance community, social wellbeing and promoting Australia's national identity

  3. Cooperation and delivery of policy between layers of government

  4. The impact of COVID-19

  5. Increasing access and opportunities through innovation and the digital environment

The Inquiry collected 352 submissions, conducted a survey, and held a number of hearings, which informed the Committee to write a report and a set of recommendations.

A 205-page report titled Sculpting a National Cultural Plan; Igniting a post-COVID economy for the arts was published in October 2021, and is broken into six sections. They cover the composition of the cultural sector, approaches to evaluating it, the impact of COVID-19 on artists and organisations, and the problem of arts education in schools.

The report makes 22 recommendations, which can be divided into three categories: restorations, bespoke suggestions, and calls for further action. Importantly, the first recommendation is:

"The Committee recommends that, noting the significant short and long-term impacts of the COVID-19 public health emergency on the arts sector, the Commonwealth Government develop a national cultural plan to assess the medium and long term needs of the sector."

Essentially this report is a plan to make a plan.

Importantly, unlike the previous two Labor policies which were lost in changes of government, this report essentially has bipartisan support, with the Committee comprised of Liberal, National and Labor MPs. Although there are additional comments added to the report by Labor, there is no dissenting report. The creation of a national plan as suggested in the report has the potential to be supported by both major parties, and therefore be more likely to survive changes in government. For a long-term strategy, this is vital.

It is worth noting that is currently unclear if Labor will be supporting the creation of such a plan, or pushing ahead with their own policy if elected. You can read Federal Shadow Minister for the Arts Tony Burke’s address to the Arts Industry Council of South Australia where he speaks about the principles that will guide Labor, and the need for a cultural policy.

So, what now?

The Committee recommended that the relevant Commonwealth minister(s) report on the progress of the Committee’s recommendations by December 2022. The Government is under no obligation to implement any of the recommendations from the report, although keep in mind that they are the ones that instigated the inquiry.

In their submission to the Inquiry, ANA said: “Following the Inquiries’ report, ANA recommends the Federal Government establish an independent process to draft a NACC Plan, drawing on both evidence presented to the Inquiry and the formidable body of current data and research that is publicly available.”

The work from here is to advocate for the Government and the Opposition to commit to the development and resourcing of a national plan in their election campaigns, as we head to an election before May 2022. Within this should be a call support the Australia Council for the Arts as a key driver for the development and implementation of the plan.

Following are three more sections for those who wish to advocate for a National Plan:

Some ideas on how to do that

Play your part

What is our vision?

 https://tna.org.au/our-work/advocacy/advocacy-101-national-cultural-plan/

 


Thursday 9 December 2021

2021: Two Twenty Somethings Decide...by Michael Costi

 

 

Two Twenty Somethings Decide Never To Be Stressed About Anything Ever Again.  Ever by Michael Costi.  Canberra Youth Theatre at Canberra Theatre Centre, The Courtyard, December 9-14, 2021.

Reviewed by Frank McKone

Cast:
Boyfriend – Elliot Cleaves
Girlfriend – Martha Russell
New Best Friend – Blue Hyslop

Creatives:
Director – Luke Rogers
Designer – Aislinn King
Lighting Designer – Antony Hateley
Sound Designer – Kimmo Vennonen
Stage Manager – Rhiley Winnett
Assistant Stage Manager – Ashley Pope

The exaggerated title is just about right for this light-hearted absurdist somewhat satirical up-to-date rom com.  The many twenty-somethings near me laughed out loud so much that my hearing aids overloaded.  Even if I had heard every word, I still wouldn’t have understood half the social media references.

The essential message was Never Work in a Chicken Burger Take-away, or you’ll never be able to cross the road again.  Never.  And there was a very serious political point about the treatment of a Syrian refugee Uber driver if you accidentally give him only one star, who cancels you and cancels your account.

The narrow rectangular Courtyard space does not make stage design easy, but Aislinn King, recently selected for the World Stage Design exhibition in Calgary, Canada, next year, has made a see-through set which allows for much more wild action – and occasional moments of reflection – than you might expect.

The three actors have all the skills and timing needed, and a real sense of working with, and off, each other – a great team.

I’m not sure I learned how not to be stressed in today’s world – except that the really important message from this play is that performing for a real audience in real time and space is better than any spurious ‘metaverse’.  And laughing with, not at, each other makes life worth living – and that’s what theatre is all about.

Enjoy!



© Frank McKone, Canberra

Wednesday 8 December 2021

2021: The Stranger by Albert Camus

 

 

The Stranger (L’Étranger) by Albert Camus, adapted for stage by Christopher Samuel Carroll.  Bare Witness Theatre Company at Ralph Wilson Theatre, Gorman Arts Centre, Canberra, December 8-11 and 16-17, 2021.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
December 8

Performer: Christopher Samuel Carroll
Designer: Gillian Schwab
Music: Olivia Graham
Operator: Rachel Pengilly
Promotional Photography: Novel Photographic
Production Stills: Andrew Sikorski

Christopher Samuel Carroll as Meursault
in The Stranger by Albert Camus

 

As a psychological study of an alienated young man, Meursault, I prefer the French title L’Étranger to be translated as The Outsider.  In court on trial for what could be judged as an accidental murder, the prosecutor describes Meursault as an abomination, thrusting the words at the jury – “un abîme menaçant d'engloutir la société” – “a menacing abyss about to swallow society”.

But Meursault, as he often says, is not a stranger.  He is just like the rest of us – capable of standing mentally to one side to protect ourselves from taking action which requires accepting responsibility.  Camus’ 1957 story was more prescient than he could ever have known, when we consider the populist politics of today.  Meursault didn’t intend to kill the unnamed stranger, the Arab, in French colonial Algiers; just as, for example, Kevin Rudd didn’t intend to cause the deaths of refugees when he announced that no asylum seeker who arrived by boat would ever be allowed to stay in Australia.

In his day, Meursault, is forced to plead guilty (after all it was true he killed a man), and is guillotined.  Rudd lost an election to Abbott, Turnbull, Morrison and Dutton: no-one has pleaded guilty for the deaths and trauma in off-shore detention or even when finally brought onshore under the short-lived medivac legislation.

So the first thing to say about Christopher Samuel Carroll is that his presentation of this work in Canberra, the nation’s capital, is important for us to see.  It is so much more than an interesting look back at French absurdism and existentialist philosophy in an academic light; it’s about our own abîme menaçant swallowing our society today.  [If you would like an academic read, in French, go to “Albert Camus et L'Absurdité de la Vie” at http://mabdaa.edu.iq/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/36-Albert-Camus-et-LAbsurdit%C3%A9-de-la-Vie.pdf ]

The next thing to say is that the simple in-the-round intimate theatre design, in which Meursault tells us his story, in changing levels of light and dark, engages us directly, not only in the story – as reading the novel does – but even more in the emotions we feel in response.  When reading the novel, I found I could stand off to the side and become involved in intellectual matters, like should the justice system have been more empathetic to the young man when his alienation was caused by a cold society in the first place; and certainly should the death penalty have been abolished, as it now has been increasingly around the world.  

If reading the book as I did when it was first translated helped make me support Amnesty International on intellectual grounds, Carroll’s telling of the story as Meursault makes me feel with and for him – and helps me understand him.

This can only happen because Carroll’s acting skills are exemplary – played straight, from the inside of his being.  This is the quality which I think of as ‘pure’ acting.

I’m pleased to see the short season has already been extended, and I trust that Bare Witness can take The Stranger further afield.


© Frank McKone, Canberra

Thursday 25 November 2021

2021: Chiaroscuro by David Atfield

 

 

Chiaroscuro by David Atfield.  Canberra Theatre, Courtyard Studio, November 25-27 2021

Reviewed by Frank McKone
November 25

Writer & Director David Atfield
Designer Rose Montgomery
Lightning Designer Gillian Schwab
Intimacy Choreographer Liz Lea
Design Assistant Imogen Keen
Company and Stage Manager Anni Doyle Wawrzynczak

Cast:
Caravaggio Mark Salvestro
Gregorio Shae Kelly

David Atfield is not the first to imagine that Michelangelo Merisi (Michele Angelo Merigi or Amerighi) da Caravaggio may have been homosexual.  In the 1986 movie Caravaggio (1h 29 min  18+), directed by Derek Jarman, “The volatile life of the eponymous 17th-century painter is gorgeously re-imagined through his brilliant, near-blasphemous paintings and flirtations with the underworld. With Tilda Swinton, Sean Bean, Robbie Coltrane, Michael Gough, and Nigel Terry in the title role.
https://www.amazon.com/Caravaggio-Noam-Almaz/dp/B00241VL42  ]

At https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/books/reviews/caravaggio990711.htm Richard E. Spears wrote in 1999:
Fascination with Caravaggio's art and life is at an historic high, to judge from the quantity of writings about him, not just exhibition catalogues and scholarly studies but plays, mystery stories, novels and Derek Jarman's boldly homoerotic film, "Caravaggio." For the past year alone I count at least 25 new titles, including a thesis on "The Life and Legend of Caravaggio Interpreted through Fiction and Film."

But Atfield has made a work of art about a work of art: The Raising of Lazarus.

Michelangelo’s model for Lazarus, Gregorio, thinks that can’t be the artist’s real name because Michelangelo, who painted the Sistine Chapel, “has been dead for fifty years”.  Gregorio makes most of his money from being a “whore” for gentlemen.  He (and we) soon discover that this Michelangelo makes money being contracted by rich gentlemen to paint Biblical scenes which they donate to churches.  Though he’s not exactly a gentleman, a sexual relationship with Gregorio develops because, to the artist, his model is “beautiful”.

For Gregorio the money-making becomes problematic.  He reaches a point where he refuses to be paid for the work as a model; but does that mean Michelangelo should pay him for sex?  Or is there a sincere love between them – a ‘connection’, as Gregorio says?

Shae Kelly as Gregorio; Mark Salvestro as Caravaggio

So, from this angle, the play sheds light in our time on a broader question than just the acceptance of homosexuality, but even to the legal and political issue of the nature of consent.  When they both drink too much, jealousy and misunderstandings become violent.  Michelangelo might well have killed Gregorio  - reminding me of Kenneth Halliwell’s murder of the playwright Joe Orton; and of the women killed at the rate of one a week in Australia by men.

Atfield could have written a very good play about these real life matters, but this play is about the shades of light for which Caravaggio was so famous, and which shifted arts practice.  It was said that a Caravaggio painting was like a poem.  A poem uses words as the painter brushes on the colour – Caravaggio was said not to draw but only to work directly with the brush.  The imaginative use of words in poetry creates images and meanings out of the ordinary; while a whole poem can become a metaphor which changes the reader’s perception of the ordinary.

So a shift comes about in Chiaroscuro as Caravaggio works at re-creating the here-and-now Gregorio into Lazarus – what does the image of Lazarus mean?  Lazarus who has died and four days later is miraculously brought back to life by Jesus.  When Michelangelo killed his friend/rival, why did this innocent not see the wonder of heaven as he died?  Michelangelo saw only terror in his victim’s eyes.  Did Lazarus see nothingness as he died the first time?  What does he mean to hold his hand up towards Christ – seeking to return to the here-and-now because there is no heaven; or to warn us all not to believe in Jesus’ words?

Then the painter, Caravaggio, sees Gregorio in a new light.  He becomes Lazarus insisting on partaking in life, in the ordinary world, not even on the outer in the way Caravaggio is as the painter – as the artist.  At the point when Caravaggio knows how to finish the painting of “The Raising of Lazarus”, Gregorio leaves him for real life.  And Caravaggio knows that after death, as Lazarus knows, there is absolutely nothing.

And in writing this play, David Atfield shows the meaning of Caravaggio’s painting as a marker in history of the beginning of disbelief in religion – while we see the raising of religion, a new Lazarus, in our Parliament this very week, with MPs arguing futilely about ‘religious protection’ and ‘religious discrimination’, to allow religious institutions to discriminate against homosexuals.  We heard, as the play was ending on Thursday evening, from a Christian gay woman teacher who has been dismissed by a Christian school just because she is gay.  Check out Q&A on ABC TV, November 25, 2021.

Chiaroscuro, a play of the light and the dark, is a work of art; a poem in 70 minutes; a Caravaggio of his time and ours.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

Monday 22 November 2021

2021: New Platform Papers Vol 1

 

 

New Platform Papers No 1, Currency House, November 2021.
Contact: Martin Portus
Phone 0401 360 806
mportus2@tpg.com.au

Preview by Frank McKone

The Platform Papers series published by Currency House, previously directed by Katharine Brisbane, is taking a new approach, under the new General Editor, theatre director and academic Julian Meyrick

Katharine provides in her Christmas Greetings an outline of changes, especially in the status of women, that have taken place over the two decades of her leadership in setting up Currency House, following her stepping down as publisher of Currency Press.

Rather than each Platform Paper being an essay by a single expert contributor, this New Platform Paper contains five papers, with additional material:

No 1. Imagination, the Arts and Economics  
Introduction: A Snail May Put His Horns Out, Harriet Parsons  
Models, Uncertainty and Imagination in Economics, Richard Bronk  
What’s Wrong with Cannibalism? Jonathan Biggins and John Quiggin  
You Can Sing (Averagely)! Astrid Jorgensen  
Afterword: Looking Back and Looking Forwards, Ian Maxwell

Rather than offer a summary of the complex arguments and practical experiences presented by such a variety show of commentators, here is a selection of quotes which hopefully will stir your social, political and artistic interests and knowledge.

Julian Meyrick explains:

The first issue of the New Platform Papers published in this volume arose out of an event which will be central to the series from now on, an annual Authors’ Convention. The Convention itself was the initiative of my colleague, the new Director of Currency House and Katharine’s daughter, Harriet Parsons. A brilliant addition to our activities, the Convention is a two-day public gathering where we invite the authors of Platform Papers to come together to reflect on a given theme.


Harriet Parsons (Wurundjeri country)
Introduction: A Snail May Put His Horns Out


We have to decide what changes we are willing to make if we are to plan a route, not just out of the pandemic, but off the dangerous course we have been following for the past forty years. The arts may seem an unlikely point man for this operation. We have become more like a snail than a butterfly, withdrawn inside the protection of its shell, but as the eighteenth-century radical Thomas Spence once wrote, ‘a snail may put his horns out’.

 
This first volume of the New Platform Papers is devoted to exploring how our imaginations became captives of the ‘dismal science’, and the role the arts can play in leading the way out.


Richard Bronk (United Kingdom)
Models, Uncertainty and Imagination in Economics


The coordination properties of models and their associated narratives—their tendency when internalised to frame expectations and influence behaviour and outcomes—makes them an instrument of corporate or government power. And this power may—initially at least—be in inverse proportion to the degree of humility with which the narrative or model is promulgated.


The poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley, underlined the role of imagination in sympathy and therefore morality in his Defence of Poetry:
A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and of many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own. The great instrument of the moral good is the imagination—and poetry administers to the effect by acting upon the cause.

 
Such sympathetic identification with the plight of others is often seen as the quintessential opposite of the narrow self-interest of homo economicus.
…we all have no choice but to imagine the future, interpret the creative interpretations that others place on their predicaments, and invent new ways of making sense of our own.

Jonathan Biggins and John Quiggin (Awabakal and Worimi country / Turrbal and Jagera country)
What’s Wrong with Cannibalism?


Jonathan Swift’s essay A Modest Proposal was prompted by the British national debt crisis of 1729. Having offered conventional solutions in a number of essays, he turned to satire in frustration, proposing that landlords eat the children of their poor tenants:
I grant this food will be somewhat dear, and therefore very proper for landlords, who, as they have already devoured most of the parents, seem to have the best title to the children …

 
Swift’s A Modest Proposal seems, yes, a ludicrous idea, but then look at Airbnb, where you monetise your family home. The home was the sacred hearth of the family. But then someone came up with the idea of selling part of it to strangers on a nightly basis. We recently toured to Orange in regional New South Wales. It has 364 Airbnbs, but no-one can rent a house there.


At an artistic level, much of our cultural policy is now being dictated by social media platforms, and artists are increasingly self-censoring. We were recently told not to portray non-Caucasian characters in the Wharf Revue. We were portraying Xi Jinping and Kim Jong-un, two of the most powerful people in the world. I find it extraordinary that satirists are now being told who they can and can’t offend. I would have thought the point was to offend everybody.


Harriet Parsons asks:  So is the universal basic income the answer for the arts?
JQ:  I’m certainly a proponent of a version of the universal basic income, which is the level of income guarantee, which would include a basic living standard for artists engaged in creative work. It differs in the sense that you don’t give it to Gina Rinehart and try to extract it back through taxes, you only expand the provision of basic incomes. But that would provide a basic income to anybody who wanted to apply themselves to creative work. That is something we could and should do.

Astrid Jorgensen (Turrbal and Jagera country)
You Can Sing (Averagely)!


I could not wrap my head around the fact that teenagers were spending every second of their lives consumed by music while simultaneously proclaiming to hate Music, the subject. They would walk into the classroom with their favourite singer blasting in their headphones, then take the headphones out, slump in their chair and despise singing with me for 50 minutes. I started to worry that I was ruining music-making for children, which was a heavy burden to bear.


[Astrid left school teaching to set up the well-known Pub Choir, which in the pandemic lockdowns became Couch Choir online, attracting participants from all over the world.]


But there was one thing still bothering me. None of these choirs reflected me in any way. Each of my seven choirs were either made up of kids forced to sing by their parents, or were mostly white, semi-retirees. There is nothing unpleasant about working with either group. But as a 20-something Asian woman myself, it was confusing to me that none of my peers wanted to sing.

So in 2017, after years of friends declining to sing with me, I wrote a list. On it, I put every excuse I’d ever heard about what stopped somebody from joining a choir:
Auditions
Time commitment
Having to compete/perform
Reading sheet music
Unfamiliar repertoire

General choir lameness
Having a bad singing voice
.


I determined to solve all of these roadblocks. Thus, Pub Choir was born.
Not always in a pub, the trademarked name, Pub Choir, describes my musical act. It’s a ticketed show during which I transform an audience—any audience—into a functional choir.


I believe that Pub Choir gives people the opportunity to embrace and value mediocrity and truly, madly, deeply embrace their averageness. There is a freedom in a crowd where you are genuinely unimportant. Nobody believes that they have become a better singer at Pub Choir. They just feel less afraid to share whatever horrible voice they have. If one person forgets what to sing, someone nearby will remember. Some people sing flat, some sing sharp, some sing too early, some too late and the overall effect is a rich, full, electrifying average. Our audiences reclaim music-making back into their lives, realising that singing belonged to them all along.


The diversity within Couch Choir participants was remarkable. In one song we had 5,000 participants from 45 countries. We received submissions from places we had never considered visiting, like Kazakhstan and Norway. People sent videos from their farms, their wheelchairs, from houseboats, using sign language. They were younger, older, more colourful. Couch Choir was the distillation of what I had always hoped Pub Choir would be: regular, diverse people feeling personally empowered to contribute to the whole.


Sure, it’s not peer-reviewed research, it’s just 613 people who chose to participate. But when 100 per cent of them self-report that their mental health is improved by joining in, it’s worth taking note. Singing—even online—made them feel happier, more connected and more hopeful. And they thought it was an experience worth fighting for. Art has always been more than just entertainment or a distraction. Art can heal us.

Ian Maxwell (Cadigal and Darramuragal country)
Afterword: Looking Back and Looking Forwards


Exhaustion, then, is integral to the [arts] field at the best of times. In the context of the acute crisis of the current Covid-19 epidemic, the arts eat their young…. [leading to] three questions, which were put to the Convention for further discussion. Four key themes emerged. First, the proposition that art and culture are fundamental to the sustainability of society; second, that those engaged in the fields of art and culture do not have the capital to support them; third, that the arts are exhausted; and fourth, that its professionals have been pitted against each other in the competition for resources, with the result that the sector has become fragmented and unable to advocate for its interests as a whole.


Ambiguity is the strength of art, as well as its weakness. Historically—indeed from Plato onwards—the protean, make-believe, liminal nature of theatre—and the recent genres that take up the even more equivocal trope of ‘performance’—has generated profound anxiety and moral panics.


Our challenge is to resist reprising old arguments that belong to the past, and instead peer through the lens of new experiences with the eye of imagination. That, I hope, is the project Currency House has set before us, and towards which the inaugural Convention of 2021 has made the critical first step.

For interviews, review or purchase, please contact Martin Portus.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

Monday 15 November 2021

2021: Norm and Ahmed by Alex Buzo

 

 


Norm and Ahmed by Alex Buzo.  Riverside Theatre, Parramatta (Sydney), November 15 – 20, 2021.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
November 15

Cast
Laurence Coy as Norm
Rajan Velu as Ahmed

Creative Team
Production Director – Aarne Neeme
Associate Director – Terence Clarke
Lighting Designer – Lucia Haddad
Stage Manager & Production Manager – Emma Paterson
Producers – Grant Dodwell, Peter Hiscock & Raj Sidhu
Associate Producers – Lucy Clements & Emma Wright
Publicity – Sean Landis
Photographer – Becky Matthews



Norm and Ahmed at Riverside still stirs the melting pot after 50 years.

A CONTROVERSIAL BEGINNING
When nascent playwright Alex Buzo returned to his Sydney flat from the pub late one
night in 1969, the phone rang. It was the artistic director of a Queensland theatre
company. The Vice Squad were threatening to have one of the actors in “Norm and
Ahmed” arrested for using obscene language. The next night, the actor was arrested
and charged, as were others involved in productions around the country, igniting a
much-publicised campaign against censorship that spanned three states and ended in
the Supreme Court in 1970. In a 2005 television interview, Buzo said:
 

“my aim as a writer was to put Australian drama on the front page. I didn't anticipate this
sort of front page treatment but, I thought it did have a good result in the sense that
people knew that Australian drama was alive and well, whereas up until that point it had
no publicity whatsoever...I'd be disappointed if people didn't think the play had
something to say about racism and generational envy...it is a literary play, it is an art play,
it's meant to be humorous and imaginative, it's meant to have other things going for it
other than the final two words.”
 
Emma Buzo [ https://www.alexbuzo.com.au/downloads/files/NormTeaching09.pdf ]

In her 2009 Teaching Notes, Emma Buzo also records:
When it was produced in Sydney in 2007, director Aarne Neeme set the action in the
present day, merely changing Norm from a WWII veteran to a Vietnam veteran and giving Ahmed a backpack instead of a briefcase.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Laurence Coy as Norm
Rajan Velu as Ahmed

In 2010, Norm and Ahmed became a Higher School Certificate study text.  Last night there clearly were students making up a fair proportion of the audience, so my focus is on the production as a “literary play…an art play”.  But it’s still a play of theatrical impact.

It’s fair to refer back to the original production which I saw at the Old Tote at University of New South Wales, which I believe police attended with a threat of possible arrest for foul language (unless my octogenarian memory has confused me with the Queensland episode).  It’s the power of the drama in the real world which is my concern.

I hadn’t seen the play since 1968, so I was surprised to hear Norm’s story of fighting in Vietnam.  In 1968 it was obvious that Norm was bull-shitting in calling himself a “Rat of Tobruk”, pretending to the naïve Pakistani student that he, Norm, had such iconic standing in Australia’s history.  When this speech was about Vietnam, although Norm was obviously and improperly boasting, because the play (in 2021) is clearly set in the past, it seemed he could have been there with such aggressively awful racist views.  He simply became a rat.

Go to Trove in the National Library to find the digital copy of the original script to see, and understand the difference between World War II and the Vietnam War.  Young people last night could have treated Norm as genuine, even though he ended up boasting a bit too much.

On this point and elsewhere in Coy’s performance of Norm, it was too often possible for us in the audience to find some sympathy for Norm.  In Ron Hadrick’s day as Norm, the serious foreboding menace from the very beginning, asking Ahmed for a light – after just having stamped his own cigarette out – was unrelenting.  In this presentation, for example, Norm could have been genuine in suggesting Ahmed go to a club to mix socially.  In fact, of course, he knew he was very deliberately suggesting Ahmed go into a terrible threatening situation.

Now I come to the literary-art play question.  In 1968 it was obvious that Alex Buzo, and surely Ron Hadrick, were under the influence – for the right reason – of the great British playwright Harold Pinter.  Wikipedia records:

The Birthday Party (1957) is the first full-length play by Harold Pinter. It is one of his best-known and most frequently performed plays.

In the setting of a rundown seaside boarding house, a little birthday party is turned into a nightmare when two sinister strangers arrive unexpectedly. The play has been classified as a comedy of menace, characterised by Pinteresque elements such as ambiguous identity, confusions of time and place, and dark political symbolism.


The essence of Pinter’s dramatic technique was to build in pause…after pause…after pause.  In the often long pauses, the audience hears what’s been said and then goes on to imagine what the meaning is supposed to be, coming from the speaker who paused, and being understood – or not – by the person spoken to.  The effect, even though the characters do nothing physical to attack each other, is a building sense of menace until violence is inevitable.

In Laurence Coy’s presentation of Norm, he was too voluble, the lines coming without the building up of threatening pauses – in which the audience bit by bit feel they have to be on Ahmed’s side, even though on the surface Norm has done little (beyond a few little things) which are seriously violent.  Until the last line, where the foul language and violent action come together.

I noticed that the running time last night was quite a bit shorter than I was expecting.  I think the full use of Pinteresque pauses would have added maybe ten minutes to the 45 minutes the play ran.  Whether this was a directorial matter, or a first night effect for the actors, I can’t say.  Of course, the acting in itself was excellent – but I have to say violence at the end in 1968 was a huge frightening shock.

This Norm and Ahmed is certainly well worth seeing because the play is still relevant – perhaps even more so compared with 50 years ago as our multicultural society has become more complex and issues of individual rights are prominent on social media as well as in daily life.  The line which highlights racism comes when Norm taunts Ahmed, saying he isn’t really black, but could get on well in this country because he might – just – pass as white!

Norm and Ahmed by Alex Buzo: Norm's claim to be
"one of the rats of Tobruk"
Digitised original script at Trove, National Library, Australia
https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-37314951/view?partId=nla.obj-37314967 



© Frank McKone, Canberra

Saturday 13 November 2021

2021: The Wharf Revue: Can of Worms

 

 


Wharf Revue: Can of Worms by Jonathan Biggins, Drew Forsythe and Phillip Scott presented by Soft Tread at Canberra Theatre November 8-20, 2021

Reviewed by Frank McKone
November 14


    Writers: Jonathan Biggins, Drew Forsythe and Philip Scott
    Co-Directors: Jonathan Biggins and Drew Forsythe
    Musical Director: Philip Scott
    Lighting Designer: Matt Cox
    Video and Sound Designer: David Bergman
    A Soft Tread production
    Performed by Jonathan Biggins, Mandy Bishop, Drew Forsythe and Phillip Scott


I quote Pauline Hanson, at least according to Drew Forsythe in this Can of Worms: “We must get back to our roots!”  That’s exactly what the born again Wharf Revue team have done, to great acclaim from an audience of Ken Behrens.  I’m sure that’s how Amanda Bishop’s Jacinda Adern would pronounce it.

The essence of great satire is to observe the public face of people in power, filter out the cover-up, and exaggerate the core of truth.  It’s hard work for the writers and actors; it’s fun to watch; but beyond making us laugh – in top quality performers – there’s a level of understanding.  For the audience this may be (1) enlightening as a critical judgement; (2) excruciating, even embarrassing for the politician – when we may laugh feeling as if perhaps we shouldn’t; and (3) occasionally even heartwarming, when we laugh with the character rather than at them.

In Can of Worms, Amanda Bishop achieved levels (1) and (2) in her portrayals of Michaela Cash and Jacqui Lambie and (3) for Jacinda Adern.  But perhaps the most remarkable achievement in this year’s Wharf Revue is Drew Forsythe’s levels (1), (2) and (3) all in the one characterisation of The Queen, as she approaches 70 years on the throne – the longest reigning monarch in British history.

I’ve reviewed The Wharf Revue often over the past ten years.  In recent years it was beginning to turn into a more ‘slick’ presentation, mainly in the use of multimedia and even to some degree in the acting style.  Can of Worms is straightforward, you could even say old-fashioned, satirical revue – and it works a treat.

Open the Can of Worms for yourself as it tours here in Canberra and out of our bubble to the rest of the real world.  All praise to the longstanding team of Phil Scott, Drew Forsythe, Jonathan Biggins and Amanda Bishop for striking out on their own from the Mother Wharf at the Sydney Theatre Company.  May their wharves flourish forever.

© Frank McKone, Canberra


Saturday 4 September 2021

2021: The School Drama Book - Robyn Ewing (Sydney University) & John Nicholas Saunders (Sydney Theatre Company)

 

 

The School Drama BookRobyn Ewing (University of  Sydney) and John Nicholas Saunders (Sydney Theatre Company).  Currency Press, Sydney 2016 (Reprinted 2021)

Reviewed by Frank McKone
Saturday September 4, 2021


I have just been listening to the ABC Science Show.  The speakers emphasised the need for everyone to be science literate, pointing out that new discoveries are not found by following the norm, and not only by putting things in boxes but more by linking the boxes together in new and previously unexpected ways.

Having myself been a teacher of clear thinking and logic (in team with a woman mathematician), while also teaching drama, I remember with joy the last school production I directed.  I needed a student who would know how to set up and run the new-fangled programmable lighting and sound board.  The science staff directed me to a lad who had never attended a theatre in his life but, they said, was brilliant.

He was astounded – watching rehearsals, devising and operating the lighting, sound and video for Tyger the musical  by Adrian Mitchell about William Blake – by how the actors, dancers and singers could do what they do.  “Every science student should do drama” was his conclusion from that experience.

That was in 1993.  By 2009 Sydney Theatre Company began piloting School Drama, an “artist-in-residence professional learning program for primary school teachers, which focuses on the power of using drama as pedagogy with quality literature to improve English and literacy in young learners.”  By 2012 the program moved on from the pilot stage, the teachers reporting “that the implementation of drama devices in their classroom English program enhances students’ deep understanding of literary texts, improves their oracy, inferential comprehension, writing and their confidence more generally.”

Professor Robyn Ewing, University of Sydney, and Helen Hristofski, STC’s Education Manager 2006-12) were discussing a potential collaboration between the theatre company and the university, at the same time as the Co-Artistic Directors of STC, Cate Blanchett and Andrew Upton were discussing the potential role of artists in primary schools.  

The School Drama Book was first published in 2016, to be used alongside the School Drama program, with 7 Workshops outlined for each of 22 titles which provide the stimulus for making drama, from Being Different using Herb, the Vegetarian Dragon to The Power of Words using Phileas’s Fortune: a story about self-expression (Agnès de Lestrade and Valeria Docampo).  The Book has been reprinted this year, proving its value to the education community.

In each Workshop, the Drama Devices for the teacher to use are given with what would be Stage Instructions in a playscript.  An example, which could well relate to my recent commentary on Big hArt and the Roebourne Indigenous Community’s NEO-Learning program, is John Jagamarra using The Burnt Stick (Anthony Hill and Mark Sofilas).

After a Word Bank starting from ‘isolation’, ‘family’, ‘loneliness’, ‘stealing’, ‘journey’,’mother’, ‘loss’; Freeze Frames are used to lead to a Class Discussion.  Then the teacher (or artist-in-residence) reads from the story ‘John Jagamarra grew up at the Pearl Bay Mission for Aboriginal Children ... [to Page 13]…the colour of the evening, so much darker than his own’ and takes the class into a Visualisation session, asking them “to think about Pearl Bay Mission [and] to imagine they are invisible and standing in the Mission [and] to think about what they can see, hear, and feel at the Mission.”  After another Freeze Frame, the workshop ends with the creation of Soundscapes which each group in a circle performs for a listening group in the centre.  Each student writing their own description of Pearl Bay Mission is a follow-up exercise.

In any Workshop there may be any number of Devices used.  Some others, for example, are Conscience Circle/Teacher-in-Role; Tableau and Tapping In; Hot Seating; Postcard; Artefacts….and immediately I find myself back in my drama teaching days – except that in my time the idea of such explicit devices only became clear from the work of Brad Haseman and John O’Toole in 1986.  My group improvisation workshops, usually starting from a single stimulus point, were far more randomly exploratory than The School Drama Book’s more guided workshops.

But the point is that the guidance needed for primary school teaching, with the purpose of pedagogy, might not be appropriate for senior secondary students focussed on exploring the drama experience for its own sake; or perhaps for developing new drama skills with an eye to their possible future in theatre.  The discussion in the introductory sections of The School Drama Book of the principles in the process – of Making Meaning and Developing Literacy through the artforms of Literature and Drama – is very well done indeed.  Professor Ewing's and her co-writer John Nicholas Saunders' (appointed STC’s Education Manager in 2013 to oversee the growth of the program) work is a major contribution to the understanding of the history and development of drama in education.

So, to return to my beginning, where the drama so impressed that science student, while the scientists seek science literacy for everyone, I can see how the drama process so clearly laid out in The School Drama Book can be used beyond Literature as the source of stimulatory material.  Topics in Science and Mathematics can be explored not only in the ways they are now in classrooms and laboratories.  Using Drama, students’ understanding can grow from different perspectives, including the ethics of application of the results of STEM studies.

I can imagine these Drama in Science classrooms, but I think we would need artists-in-residence of the standing of the Sydney Theatre Company to change the education (and therefore political) culture described in The School Drama Book as still the norm:

…many primary teachers do not feel well equipped to embed the Arts into what has become an overcrowded curriculum.  Many western education systems, including Australia’s, are increasingly turning to a narrowed curriculum, triggered by high stakes testing and a technical focus on literacy and numeracy.  As a result, teachers often feel they must concentrate on the ‘basics’.

While despairingly, The Arts remain under-valued and under-used components of primary curricula despite unequivocal evidence that they enhance student wellbeing and, in turn, improve learning outcomes across other disciplines and subject areas.



© Frank McKone, Canberra

Thursday 26 August 2021

2021: NEO-Learning

 

 

NEO-Learning – Interactive Online Digital Education Platform.

Launched August 26, 2021. Yindjibarndi Community, Ieramugadu, (Roebourne) WA and Big hART

Commentary by Frank McKone

---o0o---


NEO-Learning is a First Nations education program for primary schools, devised by the Ieramugadu children and guided by their elders as a continuing gift to all Australians.

Big hART was first invited to work in Ieramugadu (Roebourne) 10 years ago by senior women Elders, who wanted Big hART to deliver projects which highlight heritage as living, continually evolving in the here and now. It was thereby vital that NEO-Learning celebrated living continuous culture, and was co-created by young people from Roebourne and guided by Elders and senior members of the community.

As Elder Michelle explained at the launch, “How do you bring stories about your life?  We’re in control of our story in NEO-Learning,” going on to show how the children in the schools using the platform are “not just consumers” – because they are actively engaged – and that learning online in this way is a “new literacy” for her children, as well as for everyone else.  

Most important, from the Yindjibarndi perspective, is how NEO-Learning works “to maintain our culture” from the old into the new.  “We are the teachers now,” said one of the Roebourne students, while their Elders talked of the importance of their young people taking on their role as creatives and innovators in their culture, and so being engaged and committed to their community.

The Yindjibarndi people are one of the five clans who had to take over the responsibility to care for the land known as Murujuga or Burrup Peninsula, after the ancient traditional custodians – the Yaburara – were massacred in 1869.  The area, with literally tens of thousands of rock art drawings, has been extensively damaged mainly by the LNG gas and chemicals industry which should never have been allowed to operate there.  

The Ngarluma community has taken on the task of managing as best they can what is now the Murujuga National Park, in the face of Woodside attempting to expand their operatons.  When I spoke to a Ngarluma Elder, in 2018, his central concern was that the rock art, which scientific studies show dates back to at least 35,000 years ago and was still being actively worked until the massacre, is essential in the education of young people today, so that they understand and respect their culture, and are committed to their community.  

Despite the WA Government doing its part in requesting Murujuga be nominated for World Heritage (which requires the Federal Department of Environment to prepare for the Minister to put the nomination, representing Australia, to UNESCO), Woodside may yet be given what I would call a red light to go ahead with their proposed expansion.


Watching the launch of NEO-Learning, two points important for education became clear.  First is how the engagement of the teachers and their students works.  Second is the arts education principle, which underpins the process.

This is where an appreciation of Big hART comes in.  I have previously written of Scott Rankin’s work, on this blog: Cultural Justice and the Right to Thrive by Scott Rankin.  Platform Paper No 57, November 2018 (Currency House, Sydney).  

Speaking at the launch he made his philosophy clear, in simple terms: “It’s harder to hurt someone if you know their story.”  Big hART people are “servants of society”, operating not as a generalised charity, but as facilitators of specific projects through the arts.  “We are the privileged ones,” he says, because of what the Yindjibarndi people are doing for us.

The Canberra Hospital School teachers – team leader Jo Daly, Penny Fry and Debbie Sam – spoke enthusiastically of the flexibility of the NEO-Learning program, with Big hART’s highly practical facilitator Mark Leahy, in their constantly changing situation.  

The students come and go according to their hospital treatment requirements, and what they are capable of doing from day to day is unpredictable.  The NEO-Learning program consists, for a start, of videos made in Roebourne with such enthusiasm and sense of fun, that even hospital inmates who can’t get up and dance are thoroughly enthused about their own futures.  And for teachers in more stable circumstances, it is through the arts activities, perhaps especially in dance, painting and music which the videos generate, that real understanding of First Nations culture becomes built into their students’ learning.  

Governor-General David Hurley spoke powerfully of the essentially inclusive nature of the project – bringing us together as Australians in a multi-cultural society – as he introduced the first Indigenous woman Member of Parliament, Linda Burney, to officially launch NEO-Learning.  She spoke of her own work teaching, and then in advocacy and curriculum development for Aboriginal Education, remembering her own experiences when young, of being made to feel inferior, in the time when “Aboriginal” meant at best “primitive”, and at worst meant to be massacred, as the Yaburara had been in 1869.

Though she spoke more briefly than she had intended – because the enthusiasm of previous speakers had let time get away – I thought of the great contrast between the treatment still of Indigenous people in the “justice” system, and of the explicit racism I have seen in many places on my travels around Australia, compared to the dictum provided to us by Scott Rankin

It’s harder to hurt someone if you know their story.  And even harder if you join with them in the art of story-telling through NEO-Learning.


© Frank McKone, Canberra

Saturday 21 August 2021

2021: A Migrant's Son by Michaela Burger

 

 

Opal Mining at Coober Pedy
A dream image representing
A Migrant's Son
by Michaela Burger
(Image: Stage Whispers)

A Migrant’s Son by Michaela Burger.  Produced by Critical Stages Touring.

Filmed at the Hopgood Theatre, South Australia 2020, streamed online by Riverside Theatre, Parramatta (Sydney) as A Migrant’s Son Online Watch Party and Interactive Live Chat, Friday August 20, 2021.

The performance (without Live Chat) is also available to stream On Demand on Youtube from Saturday August 21 to Sunday September 5 – viewers can watch as many times as they wish.  Bookings via https://riversideparramatta.com.au  or phone (02) 8839 3399.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
August 20

Performed by Writer and Composer        Michaela Burger
With La La Land Choir and George Grifsas (Bouzouki/Guitar)

Director                                                            Jane Packham
Musical Director and Choral Arrangements    Carol Young
Music Producer/Arranger                                 Dave Higgins
Dramaturgs                                      Sally Hardy & Elena Carapetis
Song Development                                           Jethro Woodward
Costumes                                                          Artemis Sidiropoulou
Lighting Design                                               Tom Bayford

After-show Live Chat with Michaela Burger hosted by Critical Stages CEO Chris Bendall.

---o0o---


Michaela Burger is a force to be reckoned with – as a story teller; a voice for her family and migrant community; simply as a powerful speaking and singing voice; as an instant creator of character; as a musician and composer; and as an actor with presence who communicates honestly with her audience.  

Filming a stage show can often mean losing the human warmth of a live show.  This performance was filmed between Covid restrictions, and, as Burger and Bendall laughingly recalled, was a hurried job as the unlikely opportunity arose.  

Though I have not seen the show onstage – it’s life  seems to have begun  at The Butterfly Club, Melbourne in May 2018 (Stage Whispers) and has toured in Australia and UK – this Hopgood Theatre performance seems to have a sense of immediacy, almost as if improvising as the musicians, choir, and solo performer Burger switch from song to story, from costume to costume, from one family character to another, including herself as the daughter of the son of the Greek migrant whose parents had arrived in Australia in 1924.

Michaela Burger

Michaela Burger (George Grifsas behind)

Although this work has been classed as fringe cabaret, this to me puts it down a peg below its significance.  Cabaret, of course, can be more than attractive entertainment and certainly can be political, as it was in its beginnings in post World War I Germany.  And it can be something like standup comedy, much of which nowadays consists of a humorous, often ironic, take on the performer’s personal life.  In the Canberra-Queanbeyan tradition, we are used to a variation on this theme in the shows by Shortis & Simpson, which began in the Queanbeyan School of Arts Café back in the mid-1990s.

But Michaela Burger has revealed in this show a highly personal experience which is clearly fundamental to her sense of herself, of her understanding of her identity, and even of her need to be a creator and performer.  She shows us why she is what she is because of the bonds in her family, on her father’s side through from her grandfather and even great-grandfather, and the culture of Greek women in their lives.

This, in my view, places A Migrant’s Son in the line of work of quite recent times, which I have called Personal Theatre.  Though my situation means I never see as wide a range of theatre as I would like, so far all work of this kind seems to be by women.  I will now add Michaela Burger to my list: Liz Lea in Red (2018), Ghenoa Gela in My Urrwai (2018), I’m a Phoenix, Bitch by Bryony Kimmings (2020), and Stop Girl by Sally Sara (2021).

The content and theatrical form in each case is quite different, but the essence of this type of theatre is that we are taken directly into appreciating, understanding and respecting an element of each creator’s personal life which is central to their understanding of themselves.  In each story there is some particular moment of new awareness entirely personal to her, which I have experienced during the performance as an awakening of my own feelings – for the performer, and for myself on reflecting on my own life.

That moment in A Migrant’s Son is the accidental death of Michaela’s uncle: her father’s brother; her grandmother’s son.  Even though Michaela had never met her uncle, it was in her learning of that story in its awful detail that she understood the truth of her grandfather’s dictum: “family is everything”.  When, in the Live Chat, someone asked “Is family still everything?”, I knew the answer before Michaela spoke, saying “family is the meaning of identity”.

This is what theatre is for: what it is all about.


Michaela Burger
The daughter of A Migrant's Son

© Frank McKone, Canberra

Monday 9 August 2021

2021: Under the Influence by Shortis & Simpson, with Keith Potger

 

 

John Shortis, Moya Simpson, Keith Potger
Under the Influence

Under the InfluenceShortis & Simpson, with special guest Keith Potger, in a tribute to the musical inflences of the founding member of The Seekers.  Technical operator: Elizabeth Hawkes.

At Contentious Character Winery, Wamboin NSW, Sat-Sun August 7-8 2021.  Shortis & Simpson’s next guest, Covid willing, will be Karen Middleton, March 25 2022 at the National Press Club.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
August 8

In my day, which means 1964 when The Seekers landed in London and 'Morning Town Ride' went to No 1 for weeks on end, I thought they were perfectly politically correct.  Very nice people.  But Keith Potger, songwriter and arranger, Under the Influence of Shortis & Simpson, proves quite otherwise.  Rewriting spirituals and Australian folksongs showed a penchant for humour and picking up on the social zeitgeist; but the implications of his limericks are something apocryphal – even beyond John Shortis’ efforts.

What a relief for those of us so lucky to travel on the day out of the Federal Territory into the not currently 'Covid 19 Affected' Queanbeyan Palerang Regional area of New South Wales.  Humming along quietly, so as not to disturb the others 1.5 metres away with my rather shaky harmonies, 'All My Trials' began to fade away, 'California Dreaming' took me for that 'Morning Town Ride', while the story of Dusty Springfield and her brother Tom Springfield made me look forward to the day when 'The Carnival is Over'.

Is it OK to be nostalgic?  Everyone else seems to be hankering for ‘going back to normal’.  But I just enjoyed going back to the past when every Country & Western singer/guitarist was named Hank – at least according to Keith.  Except him, of course.

You could say Contentious Character was the right venue for Under the Influence.  Plenty of good food and wine, and a fascinating history of a colonial kind.  Moya, like me, just came from England but with a different accent.  Potger’s people went from Germany/Holland to Ceylon (that’s Sri Lanka where the tea comes from) centuries ago, and escaped Britain granting them independence by migrating to Australia when Keith was 6 or so.  To Melbourne, that is: the centre of Australian folk music – once again, according to him.

Religion plays a role in this show: John, Catholic; Moya halfway between agnostic and atheist; and Keith, Calathumpian.  The cultural mix of the Penguin Book of Australian Folk Songs, American songs like ‘The Saints Go Marching In’ as spiritual and jazz, Hoagy Carmichael’s ‘Stardust’ (even I played that on my harmonica) with special focus on Pete Seeger of The Weavers, as well as C&W titles like ‘I Kissed Her on the Lips And Left Her Behind For You’ all turned into the story of The Seekers' songs, listed over 8 printed pages on Wikipedia, from 1963 to ‘You’re My Spirit” by Potger and Athol Guy for the 1993 25 Year Reunion.

From Keith’s first group at school (The Trinamics); through the influence of The Four Lads (remember ‘Moments to Remember'); The Jordanaires’ harmonising when backing Elvis Presley; his father playing banjo/ukulele (think of George Formby); his group, The Escorts, getting on TV!; and finally The Seekers with Athol Guy, Bruce Woodley and Ken Ray – who was replaced by jazz singer Judith Durham (with Moya reprising Durham’s first song with The Seekers: the spiritual ‘My Lord What a Morning’) – this is a fascinating show full of history, musical appreciation, memory, witty humour, including the iconic Australian limerick:

There once was an eminent Seeker
Who fancied himself as a streaker,
‘Cross the MCG grass, all willy and arse,
He ran, while the crowd called….
(all in unison) ‘Eureka’!

and nostalgia for days when even in spite of the likelihood of nuclear war we could still go for a ‘Morning Town Ride’, the song written by the author of ‘What Have They Done To The Rain?’ and ‘Little Boxes’; brought to The Seekers by Keith Potger and taken to No 1.



The Seekers 1965
Wikipedia

© Frank McKone, Canberra

Monday 19 July 2021

2021: The Performance by Claire Thomas

 

The Performance

 

Published by Hachette Australia

The Performance.  A novel by Claire Thomas.  Hachette Australia, 2021.

Reviewed by Frank McKone


When watching a performance in a theatre, I often wonder what is going on in the heads of others in the audience.  You hear the occasional cough, and sense if the cougher seems embarrassed or seems to have no concern for the feelings of others.  I laugh, and shrink in a little as I realise I’ve laughed too loud.

As a critic, my feelings in response to what’s happening on stage are mixed with thoughts of many kinds about the technical elements like casting, costume and hairdressing, lighting, sound, use of voices, choreography of movement, and even placing of this play and this production in the history of theatre.  If thoughts about private matters arise, as they can, of course, I will try to set them aside and re-focus my attention on the performance.

As I write this, I seem to have become a character, not mentioned by Claire Thomas, in her audience watching Happy Days by Samuel Beckett.  Except that I am remembering the production directed by the one-time Canberra High School highly respected principal and noted theatre identity, Ralph Wilson, in 1991 – in what is now affectionately known as the Ralph Wilson Theatre.

In The Performance, the performance is clearly in a professional theatre.  Margot is an established academic and subscriber, Summer is an usher and budding actor, while Ivy is a middle-aged arts enthusiast who has brought her friend Hilary.  She thinks “Hilary was the obvious person to bring along.  They studied Waiting for Godot together in high school, an experience that marked the beginning of Ivy’s passion for Beckett, or SB as she came to refer to him.”  

“Summer has once again missed the beginning of the play” because she’s not “on Stairs” this night, but “on Door” where “her main task is handling the latecomers in the foyer".  Margot is “almost late”, “shuffling in a balletic first position along the strip of carpet between the legs of the already-seated people…and the chair backs of the row in front”.

And I immediately thought of the occasion in the Canberra Theatre, when my wife and I were amused, fortunately not in the same row as their one nearer the stage, watching the tremendously tall Margaret and Gough Whitlam, one-time Prime Minister of Australia, doing a more commanding kind of shuffle.  Then I thought, there’s another book everyone should read: Margaret Whitlam – A Biography by Susan Mitchell (Random House, 2006).

That’s what I love about The Performance.  It just naturally takes you into thinking about things, just like the characters in the story.  They are making connections, thinking and re-thinking about what’s happening on stage and what’s been triggered in their memories and about what’s happening around them at the moment.  It’s an absorbing book to read.  Though I had to take a break of a few days at interval, I understand entirely why musician and writer Clare Bowditch commented “I read from start to finish almost without looking up”.

I meant “at interval” literally.  The novel has a theatrical structure.  Before interval there are six parts, simply numbered ONE to THREE, focussed in turn on Margot, Summer and Ivy; then FOUR to SIX following each of them up later in Act One.  

Then comes THE INTERVAL – a short play, in four scenes, by Claire Thomas.  The characters listed are

SUMMER, female, early 20s, theatre usher
PROFESSOR MARGOT PIERCE, female, early 70s, audience member
IVY PARKER, female, early 40s, audience member
HILARY FULLER, female, early 40s, audience member
JOEL, male, mid-20s, audience member
APRIL, female, mid-20s (screen and voice only)

After The Interval, there are parts SEVEN to NINE, again following up Margot, Summer and Ivy in order through Act Two of Happy Days.  You don’t need to have seen or read Happy Days, but you certainly get to feel you appreciate Beckett’s work as each of the three respond to particular images, sounds, words and quality of light which spark their thoughts and feelings.

It is Ivy, then, through whose eyes we see the end of the play, in which Winnie is buried up to her waist in Act One and up to her neck in Act Two.  Ivy notes “When the lights darken to allow a surge in applause, Winnie will not climb out of her trap to appear whole again like a magician’s assistant whose destruction was an illusion.  Winnie will stay inside the mound.  She will not appease the audience.”

This is where the novel comes to its fruition, matching the insights of Samuel Beckett and the director and designer of his play (whom I take to be Claire Thomas, since there is no reference to any actual performance) with the inter-related experiences of the three women, and the traps they may or may not climb out of.

I can only agree with the other readers quoted on the cover of this novel: “Witty, affecting, brilliantly wise and original” (Gail Jones); “A potent meditation on the intensity of women’s lives” (Charlotte Wood); and “Read it as soon as you possibly can” (Emily Bitto).



 

First published by Grove Press NY
1961
First production at Cherry Lane Theatre, New York City on 17 September 1961